PAM, 

MiSC. 


(HlZ- 


B 


The  Silver  Linings 

of  a 

Missionary’s 

Clouds 


BY 

L.  W.  CRONKHITE 


American  Baptist  Foreign  Mission  Society 
Ford  Building,  Boston.  Mass. 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Columbia  University  Libraries 


https://archive.org/details/silverliningsofmOOcron 


The  Silver  Linings  of  a 
Missionary’s  Clouds 

BY  L.  W.  CRONKHITE 

OFTEN  as  one  passes  through  some  dark 
fleecy  clouds  to  the  far  side  and  sees  them 
squarely,  reflecting  the  radiance  of  the  sun, 
one  becomes  aware  of  their  brilliant  silver  lining. 
Such  is  our  experience  on  the  foreign  field.  The 
terrific  heat  of  the  tropics  is  like  a  huge,  dark,  op¬ 
pressive  cloud.  But  there  is  a  silver  lining.  There 
is  a  picturesqueness  about  life  in  a  tropical  climate 
that  fascinates,  and  often  the  missionary  settles 
back  into  it  after  furlough  with  a  feeling  of  real  satis¬ 
faction.  There  are  no  coal  bills.  There  are  no  arti- 
fically  superheated  houses  or  trains.  It  is  pleasant, 
too,  when  one  has  done  something  of  which  one  is 
ashamed,  to  know  that  there  is  always  the  heat  to 
which  he  can  blame  it. 

More  seriously,  the  missionary  has  the  high 
privilege  of  living  in  the  midst  of  a  low  civilization, 
and  a  still  lower  moral  atmosphere, — a  putrid  at¬ 
mosphere.  God  says  to  him,  “I  am  going  to  raise 
these  people  up.  I  am  going  to  lift  their  civilization 
and  cleanse  their  atmosphere.  I  did  it  once  for  your 
fathers.  I  used  missionaries  from  Rome  to  help  me. 


x 


Now  the  time  has  come  to  prepare  this  race  for  their 
place  in  the  affairs  of  the  Kingdom.  Like  those 
from  Rome,  you  are  laying  foundations.”  It  does  put 
meaning  into  life — to  feel  that  we  are  doing  some¬ 
thing  worth  while,  wherever  the  place,  high  or  low. 
That  satisfaction  remains  like  a  silver  lining  and 
does  not  wear  off. 

The  foreign  language  comes  up  before  the  mis¬ 
sionary  like  a  huge  cloud,  but  presently  it  shows  its 
silver  lining.  Centuries  ago,  our  mother  tongue 
was  a  scanty  language,  but  those  who  brought  us 
the  Gospel  began  the  work  of  enriching  it.  A  mis¬ 
sionary  wakes  up  to  the  consciousness, — and  it  may 
come  like  a  flash  of  light, — that  he  is  being  per¬ 
mitted  of  God  to  do  the  same  thing  for  some  of  the 
scanty  heathen  languages  of  today.  They  are  yet 
to  be  rich  for  the  uses  of  men  and  of  the  Kingdom 
of  God.  The  Karens  in  their  heathenism,  of  course, 
had  no  idea  of  holiness,  and  no  word  for  it.  Yet  one 
cannot  preach,  nor  translate  the  Bible  nor  hymns, 
without  the  word.  So  the  missionary  said,  in  sub¬ 
stance,  “You  have  a  word  for  ‘clean,’  as  a  cloth  is 
clean,  and  you  have  a  word  for  ‘clear,’  as  water  is 
clear.  Then  you  have  a  word  for  ‘heart,’  standing, 
as  in  English,  for  both  the  physical  heart  and  the 
spirit.  Now  when  we  want  to  speak  of  anything 
that  is  clean  in  the  realm  of  the  heart,  or  the  spirit, 
we  will  put  together  your  words  for  ‘clean’  and 


‘clear,’  and  make  one  new  word  from  the  two.”  And 
so  we  get  the  word  for  “holy,”  and  gradually  the 
Christians  come  to  understand  it.  Put  the  new  word 
with  that  for  “book”  and  we  have  a  word  for  “Bible” 
or  “Holy  Book.”  That  was  before  my  day.  My  own 
contribution  has  been  the  translating  of  about  270 
of  our  standard  English  hymns  and  Sunday  school 
songs,  in  which  I  have  tried,  as  far  as  possible,  to 
adapt  the  words  which  the  language  provides  to 
somewhat  higher  and  more  spiritual  meanings.  The 
Karens  love  to  sing,  and  it  has  been  a  great  joy  to 
me  to  reflect  that,  long  after  I  am  gone,  they  will 
still  be  singing  these  translatiohs  and  still  gaining 
from  them  instruction  and  inspiration.  It  is  worth 
while.  A  fine  house  and  an  auto,  taken  alone,  do  not 
touch  it. 

Again  there  is  the  cloud  which  comes  with  trying 
to  work  with  scanty  resources.  While  the  mission¬ 
ary’s  salary  is  always  paid  promptly,  funds  for  his 
work  at  large  are  often  very  short.  This  cloud  also 
has  a  silver  lining.  Almost  any  Christian  of  ex¬ 
perience  to  whom  the  choice  were  given  between  a 
check  book,  each  check  signed  by  some  thoroughly 
responsible  party,  to  be  filled  in  at  any  time  for  any 
amount,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  the  privilege  of 
going  on  in  the  old  way  with  scanty  visible  resources, 
but  with  God  as  partner,  would  choose  the  latter. 
The  reason  is  simple.  The  check  book  can,  indeed, 


3 


give  the  money  through  life,  without  fail.  But  that 
is  all,  for  the  check  book  has  no  personality.  But 
God  so  often  uses  the  need  of  money  to  teach  us  so 
many  things  for  which  He  has  no  other  opportunity. 
We  look  back  over  five  years  and  find  that,  all  in  all, 
our  needs  have  been  well  met  financially,  and  withal 
so  many  lessons  have  been  taught  us,  and  so  much 
of  the  divine  nearness  made  manifest,  that  the 
check  book,  by  itself,  has  no  attractions. 

The  heaviest,  darkest  cloud  of  all  comes  with  the 
separation  of  parent  and  child.  Yet  even  there  can 
be  seen  the  silver  lining.  God  seems  to  feel  a  special 
responsibility  for  children  whose  parents  have  gone 
far  afield  in  the  work  of  the  Gospel.  Oftentimes  the 
children  seem  to  appreciate  parents  who  have  done 
so  and  are  especially  responsive  to  influences  which 
they  may  exert,  even  through  the  weekly  mail.  The 
children’s  vision  is  broadened  by  the  early  foreign 
residence.  There  is,  too,  the  familiar  experience 
of  all  Christians  everywhere, — for  there  is  no  geog¬ 
raphy  in  Christian  experience, — that  God  seems  to 
draw  nearest  to  us  at  the  times  when  He  most 
severely  tries  us.  Many  a  missionary  has  found  this 
in  the  agony  of  the  first  days  of  separation  from 
children,  or  from  wife  or  husband.  The  pain  is  not 
made  less, — but  there  is  something  else  and  one  would 
not  retrace  one’s  steps  and  escape  the  trial  if  one 
could. 


4 


Then  there  is  the  “hundred  fold.”  You  leave  one 
home  to  go  abroad,  and  when  you  come  back  on  fur¬ 
lough  again,  homes  are  open  to  you  all  over  the  land, 
from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific,  simply  because  you 
are  a  missionary.  You  leave  your  children,  it  may 
be  two  or  three  or  four  or  five.  On  your  mission 
field,  everywhere  in  the  villages,  and  in  your  central 
training  school,  you  find  children  giving  you  a  wel¬ 
come,  calling  you  “father,”  or  later  on  it  may  be 
“grandfather,”  especially  if  their  parents  have  been 
pupils  of  yours.  And  those  children  need  you  so 
much.  Then  when  you  come  home,  there  are  chil¬ 
dren  all  over  America  to  welcome  and  love  you  as 
you  speak  in  their  churches  and  Sunday  schools,  and 
visit  in  their  homes.  Many  of  them,  perhaps,  write 
to  you  for  years  after.  No  words  can  express  how 
much  they  warm  the  heart.  They  do  not  take 
the  place  of  your  own  children,  but  they  do  fill  their 
own  places  very  sweetly  and  tenderly.  There  is,  too, 
the  grip  which  the  leaving  of  your  family  in  America 
often  gives  you  upon  the  people  to  whom  you  are 
giving  your  life.  Thousands  of  times  I  have  heard 
the  Karens,  both  Christians  and  heathen,  say, 
“Teacher  is  here  all  alone,  away  from  Mamma  and 
the  children  for  our  sakes,  and  we  ought  to  be  good 
to  him  and  help  him.”  How  truly  my  people  out 
there  have  tried  to  do  it.  Words  are  feeble  to  express 
the  love  and  the  tender  care  and  the  great  outpouring 


5 


of  prayer  which  my  Karens  manifested  when  in  1913 
I  lay  hovering  on  the  border,  sick  with  bubonic 
plague.  You  feel  that  even  the  separations  are 
worth  while  if  they  give  you  so  much  of  a  hold  upon 
people  who  need  you  so  badly,  and  whom  you  have 
come  to  love  with  a  great  love.  The  cloud  has  a 
silver  lining,  indeed. 

The  golden  lining  to  all  clouds  comes  in  the  dis¬ 
covery  that  the  heathen  for  whom  one  is  working 
are  well  worth  while.  There  are  many  tons  of  blue 
clay,  sticky  and  slimy,  in  the  diamond  field  at 
Kimberly,  but  we  talk  about  the  diamonds.  Who 
cares  or  thinks  about  the  blue  clay?  There  are 
diamonds  there.  Four-fifths  of  the  human  race  are 
still  outside  the  Gospel  message,  or  are  only  just 
beginning  to  be  reached  by  it.  Sometimes  we  are 
apt  to  think  of  them  as  blue  clay.  But  there  are 
pure  diamonds  there.  Ex-Secretary  of  State,  John 
W.  Foster,  speaking  of  the  position  of  China,  says 
that  it  is  one  which  “the  vision  of  a  political  seer 
might  place  in  the  van  of  all  the  nations.”  Ex-U.  S. 
Minister  Conger,  of  Pekin,  tells  us  of  the  Chinese 
that  “they  will  dispute  with  the  Japanese  and  the 
Germans  (he  leaves  us  out)  the  intellectual  suprem¬ 
acy  of  the  world.”  Prof.  Reinsch  declares  that  “it 
is  the  general  conclusion  reached  by  all  who  have 
investigated  the  matter  that  it  may  be  predicted 
with  absolute  certainty  that  the  coal  and  general 


6 


mineral  wealth  of  China,  taken  in  connection  with 
her  vast  and  highly  trained,  frugal  and  capable 
population,  will  in  this  twentieth  century  make  of 
China  the  industrial  centre  of  the  world,  and  of  the 
Pacific  the  chief  theatre  of  commerce.”  Dr.  Ament 
tells  us  that  “Christianity  is  germane  to  the  nature 
of  the  Chinese,”  while  Dr.  Charles  Cuthbert  Hall 
says  of  the  people  of  India  that  “they  will  be  the 
spiritual  eyes  of  the  church.”  Fruit  is  germane  to 
the  soil  of  southern  Idaho,  even  where  no  sprig  of 
fruit  ever  grew  since  creation.  Given  water,  it  springs 
into  life  at  once.  We  have  living  water,  and  our 
missionaries  daily  see  divine  fruit  springing  in  the 
hitherto  desert. 

Teaching  in  our  Pwo  school  in  Bassein,  Burma,  is  a 
Karen  woman  past  forty,  whose  entire  ancestry  back 
of  her  parents  was  heathen.  I  have  known  her  since 
she  was  a  twelve-year-old  pupil  in  our  school.  For 
some  years,  till  her  health  broke  in  that  climate,  she 
did  most  faithful  and  effective  work  as  a  missionary 
among  the  Shans.  She  is  an  effective  teacher,  using 
up-to-date  normal  methods,  a  fine  disciplinarian,  a 
wise  and  indefatigable  personal  worker.  She  reads, 
writes  and  speaks  well,  five  languages,  besides  having 
a  knowledge  for  correspondence  purposes  of  the 
Esperanto.  I  close  by  quoting,  without  alteration, 
from  two  letters  in  English,  received  from  her  within 
the  past  few  months.  “I  love  to  hear  about  your 


home  life  and  the  beautiful  country,  America.  I 
have  read  so  many  American  papers,  and  I  am  very 
much  interested  in  them.  How  many  times  I  have 
pictured  the  places  in  my  mind.  Lately  I  am  reading 
more  about  ‘Alaska’  and  its  progress,  both  political 
and  religious.  It  is  interesting  to  learn  something 
more  about  the  northern  regions.  By  the  way,  I 
have  lost  track  of  the  explorer’s  latest  party.” 

The  other  quotation  shows  how  contagious  is  our 
American  custom  of  sending  missionary  boxes  at 
Christmas.  “Our  Christmas  box  for  the  Kachin 
school  at  Myitkyina  is  on  its  way  now.  It  is  the  first 
Christmas  box,  since  the  time  of  Adam,  from  the 
Karens  in  Bassein.  I  saw  them  last  hot  season, 
and  I  felt  very  sorry  for  the  children,  especially  the 
motherless  and  the  fatherless  ones.” 

Silver,  indeed,  are  the  linings  of  the  missionary’s 
clouds. 


Pwo  Karen  Mission ,  Burma. 


65-10 M -4-20- 1917 


